Comments on: Facebook creepifies?

By: jason

jason — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 12:34:36 +0000

damn, alex. I fought looking at FB since forever, but I had to go get an account now. anything that can get students to freak out about personal information online is ok by me!

By: jennimi

jennimi — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 11:45:09 +0000

I am new to Facebook and still learning its culture. I hope one day that I’ll be using it to connect with students in an academic library. Meantime, I am learning its ropes, and I do find it a bit creepy to advertise to my entire network whenever a photo is uploaded or I updated a profile section, especially since I am new and that is happening a lot. Turns out you can customize your feed by clicking the “x” over to the right of each update you don’t want in the feed.

By: theory.isthereason » Only silly people fear Facebook’s News Feed

theory.isthereason » Only silly people fear Facebook’s News Feed — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 05:37:23 +0000

[…] I love Facebook’s News Feed. It’s about time… seriously. […]

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 21:43:28 +0000

Here is a live counter of the number of people who have joined the “Students against Facebook News Feed” group on Facebook….. 300,000 and climbing

http://digg.com/tech_news/Facebook_Stalker_City_Includes_LIVE_Counter

By: Michael Zimmer

Michael Zimmer — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 20:04:46 +0000

This is less about users not realizing that their personal information is public in the first place, and more about how changing the norms of flow of that information disrupts the “contextual integrity” within the Facebook community.

Yes, they knew that all that information was out there, but the existence of that information takes new meaning (and new potency) now that the delivery method has been refined in such a way that each and every change is automatically highlighted and sent to others.
http://michaelzimmer.org/2006/09/06/facebook-changes-cause-rift-in-flow-of-personal-information/

One question: I know users can customize what information they make public/private – but can they determine which of the public information will be published in the RSS feed?

By: Richard Price

Richard Price — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 18:05:33 +0000

For non-facebook users who want to find discussion of this new feature (and can’t look at the discussion in the facebook groups) there is activity at the Facebook discussion room http://www.talkface.com

By: Brad Gessler

Brad Gessler — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 16:44:56 +0000

Agreed, I find it amusing the students are now just realizing their privacy is at stake when it has been the entire time. Over the next few years you’re going to see some interesting press covering recruiting practices at colleges and how Facebook facilitates a much more thourough window into a candidates personality. I wrote some more about it at http://www.bradgessler.com/2006/09/06/what-you-dont-know-about-facebook/

By: nemik

nemik — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:55:26 +0000

I just wrote up a little script last night that does just that: transforms the News Feed to RSS.

PHP and all the source is there: http://blog.nemik.net/2006/09/06/facebook-news-feed-rss/

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:41:11 +0000

An inherently tech-savvy generation that does “not get” the idea that Facebook and MySpace have nothing to do with privacy is the same one that thinks copying CDs and DVDs from a friend isn’t stealing or that “Girls Gone WIld” won’t use that video clip because you think you’re too fat. Obviously, we have a lot more teaching to be done in the early grades.

My suggested course title, “Ethics in the Real World, or How To Keep Yourself From Doing Really Stupid Things”. Required class for all kindergartners, who tend to learn things quickly — like stealing is bad or that everyone plays by the rules except cheaters.